Working on sit - Part 1

With Royal feeling a bit more relaxed in the house I decided to start working on "sit" with him. Be prepared to see a very smart rattie boy!

 

You will also see that Catty and I have been working hard on impulse control using her mat.  It use to be that if she was in the same room while I was working with another dog, she would demand bark and be constantly moving to trying to get my attention.  I'm so impressed with Catty and I think she loves being able to be in the mix during training.

Here's one of Royal's first sessions with working on sit.  I'm not reprimanding him for putting his feet up on me, rather I just let my body move aways from the weight of his body.  He quickly figures out that this isn't working and I make sure to mark and reward the behavior I'm looking for.  Here's a great link talking about Using the word no in training. 

Because Royal is noise sensitive I use the "marker" yes instead of a clicker.

An error on my part is having the treat bag on my lap - I'm 99% sure that's the reason Royal is putting his feet up on my legs.  Again most (if not all) errors during training are on the side of the human.

 

Here we are back at training later the same day. The first attempt at sit you can see he isn't sure  what to do.  So I mark and reward him getting close to putting his rear on the floor.  After that, Royal figures out what I'm looking for so, I move from luring him with the treat to starting to incorporate a hand signal for sit.

 

And training errors on my part:  again treat bag in my lap AND the worst offense?! Not rewarding Catty for the whole 30+ seconds of this video!  Thank you to Catty for working such a long duration and shame on me for not rewarding her calm behavior quicker.